Tag Archives: China

Things didn’t start well at the airport. Immigration and customs were both fine, but then it went downhill.

Yes, we were exhausted after over 30 hours of travel from Munich at that point, but we fell into a trap at the airport – a trap that I should know better not to fall for: we listened to an “airport guide” and got ripped off on our taxi ride to our hotel in Pudong.

Instead of waiting 30 minutes for the Maglev, and instead of braving the taxi queue on our own, we let ourselves get convinced by this official-looking “airport guide” dude that 600RMB was a fair price for a private driver (i.e. cab) from the airport to Pudong.

Yeah, we got ripped off.

As we found out later in the trip, a cab for this trip should cost no more than 160RMB, and the Maglev could be had for even less. Oh, well. You live and you learn, I guess.

We really did enjoy our two days in Shanghai, though we screwed up along the way and got ripped off a time or two. Rather than dwell on that, I’ll hit some highlights of the two and a half days we spent in Shanghai. To be honest, the absolute star of the show during our stay was our hotel – the Park Hyatt Shanghai. Continue Reading →